Stamps v. Century Elec. Co.
| Decision Date | 20 December 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 27652,27652 |
| Citation | 225 S.W.2d 493 |
| Parties | STAMPS v. CENTURY ELECTRIC CO. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
James H. Hicks, Galloway & Galloway, Memphis, Tenn., and John C. Casey, of St. Louis, for appellant.
Luke, Cunliff & Wilson and George A. Ryan, all of St. Louis, for respondent.
BENNICK, Commissioner.
This is a proceeding under the workmen's compensation law, Secs. 3689-3766, R.S.Mo.1939, Mo.R.S.A. Secs. 3689-3766, and involves two claims for the death benefit allegedly due and payable because of the death of one Bennie Stamps, and employee of Century Electric Company, the employer and self-incurer.
The one claimant is Fannie Stamps, who professes to be the widow of the deceased, while the other is Alice Porter, who claims the status of a dependent mother. Both claims were heard together before the referee as well as upon review before the industrial commission.
In both instances there was a denial of compensation upon a finding that the death of the employee had not been the result of an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. Having ruled that the employee's death was not compensable, neither the referee nor the industrial commission made any finding whatever upon the question of the status or dependency of either claimant. After the entry of the adverse award by the industrial commission, the mother Alice Porter, took no further action in the case. However the alleged widow, Fannie Stamps, appealed to the circuit court, where in due time the award of the industrial commission was affirmed. Fannie Stamps thereupon gave notice of appeal, and by subsequent steps has caused the case to be transferred to this court for our review.
Our appellate jurisdiction is derived from the fact that the amount in dispute is the sum of $6,400, the parties apparently agreeing that such figure represents the amount of the death benefit to which Fannie Stamps would have been entitled if the claim had been found to be compensable and she had been found to be the widow of the deceased. Const. of 1945, Art. V, Secs. 3, 13, Mo.R.S.A.
As already indicated, the claim was based upon the theory that Stamps' death was by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. The case involves no question of occupational disease, and in fact it appears that the employer had not elected to accept the occupational disease amendment.
The employer, Century Electric Company, is engaged in the business of manufacturing electric motors, for which purpose it maintains and operates a plant at Eighteenth and Pine Streets in the City of St. Louis.
The employee, a colored man twenty-six years of age, had been in the service of the company for some six months at the time of his death on December 26, 1945. His status was that of a common laborer, and he was assigned to the fourth floor of the company's Building A on the north side of Pine Street, where his duties included various laboring jobs, such as pushing trucks loaded with supplies up and down the aisles on the floor, and stacking electric motor end brackets in bins.
On the morning in question Stamps reported for work at about 8:10 a. m., which was a few minutes late, and was told by his foreman to take brackets off a truck and stack them in a bin. The person seemingly nearest to him while his work was being performed was one Goldie Valentine, who worked at a table not far from the bin where the brackets were being stacked. Prior to Stamps' death, which occurred about 10:30 a. m., Miss Valentine observed him sitting on a box just inside the bin engaged in stacking brackets as he had been directed. It was the day immediately following Christmas, and the several employees, including Stamps, were laughing and joking with one another. He appeared to be well and in good spirits, and gave no evidence of what was soon to occur. Miss Valentine had occasion to walk about ten feet away from the bin to empty a box, and when she came back to her table she saw Stamps lying on the floor with his feet inside the bin and his body outside. He was groaning and frothing at the mouth, but was otherwise making to movements of any kind. Other persons were attracted by her screams, and Stamps was shortly carried away on a stretcher and pronounced dead by the plant physician, following which his body was removed to the City Morgue for an inquest to be held by the coroner's office.
Not only did Stamps fall dead in the manner indicated on December 26th, but strangely enough two other young colored men died under similar circumstances and without previous symptoms of illness, the one on December 27th, and the other on December 28th. While the greater part of the evidence relating to the deaths of the other two men was excluded from the case, it nevertheless appears that they too were employees of Century Electric Company. At any rate, all three cases were being inquired into by the coroner's office at one and the same time, and when the gross autopsy findings by the coroner's physician proved to be entirely negative, Dr. Walter J. Siebert, a local pathologist, was employed by the coroner to investigate the deaths.
As the result of his microscopic studies Dr. Siebert found intense hyperemia of the lungs with interstitial hemorrhages, marked albuminous degeneration of the tubular epithelium of the kidneys, and both local and central degeneration of the liver cells. The specific cause of death being still in doubt, and lacking a toxicological laboratory equipped for analyzing the tissues chemically, Dr. Siebert then transmitted certain specimens of the organs and blood of all three men to Dr. William D. McNally, a toxicologist in Chicago, who is a nationally recognized authority and writer on the subject, and is the toxicologist employed by the Cook County coroner's office. It is significant that Dr. McNally was selected by Dr. Siebert on behalf of the local coroner's office, and not by Century Electric Company, whose witness he became.
Dr. NcNally had been brought into the case on January 19, 1946, and on the following February 4th he wrote Dr. Siebert, advising that from his examination of the slides and his chemical examination of the tissues submitted, he was of the opinion that death had been due to the inhalation of a chlorinated hydrocarbon. It will be observed that he did not specify which of the thousands of chlorinated hydrocarbons it was that he had found, although Dr. Siebert, in his letter to Dr. McNally, had asked that he make such examination as he saw fit for the poisons suggested by the microscopic findings, mentioning, at the outset, carbon tetrachloride. Following a telephone conversation with claimant's attorney, Dr. NcNally then proceeded to make further and more intensive tests, and finally identified the substance present in the tissues as tetrachlorethylene, which, incidentally, the employer did not use in its plant.
While neither the referee nor the industrial commission made any specific evidentiary findings, but only the ultimate constitutive finding that the employee's death had not been by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, it is nevertheless obvious that compensation was denied because of a belief in Dr. McNally's testimony that death had been due to the inhalation or ingestion of tetrachlorethylene, which was not present at the...
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